New Mexico has a bitter gaming background. When the IGRA was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a panel in Nineteen Ninety to create a contract with New Mexico Native bands. When the task force came to an accord with 2 prominent local bands a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it seemed that Amerindian betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the compact with the Native tribes, anti-gambling groups were able to tie the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the deal, thereby denying the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It took the CNA, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full compact amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Native tribes. Ten years had been lost for gaming in New Mexico, including Amerindian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has gotten bigger since 1999. In that year, New Mexico charity game operators brought in only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have increased steadily since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is certainly popular in New Mexico. All sorts of operators look for a slice of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting over gambling as an important factor like they did in the 1990’s. That’s without doubt hopeful thinking.